July bounty

The long and winding absence was almost equal parts an unbelievably silly rookie mistake and a little girl who needs to be held upright A LOT so she can take her time working out all the details of sharing her sour milk with whomever is doing the holding (hint: I go through a lot of laundry). Actually, by now it's more the latter. The former, though, did me in for the first two weeks or so of being home.

Rookie mistake you say? Ah, yes. And I will tell you what it was. Because, see, I am willing to be your cautionary tale, even though I am convinced none of you would fall for that one. The mistake was, and I really can't believe I made it the fourth time around, upon returning home from the hospital, to confuse the meds working with me actually feeling well enough to jump into the thick of it while lapsing with the taking of the aforementioned meds. You know what anti-inflammatory drugs are good for? Turns out, reducing inflammation. Who knew, right? Probably the doctors writing me the script for ibuprofen that I was sent home with. And, of course, every single one of you. And, theoretically, me. Practically though, by discharge physically I felt pretty darned good, which is likely why my brain, busy processing all the rest of everything, forgot to mention to itself that the chief reason for me feeling fine was likely that the meds were doing what they were supposed to be doing. So unnecessarily long story short, I didn't take the meds for a bit after coming home, which made the inflammation worse, which then sat me on my ass for a while. Which actually was extremely uncomfortable for most of that time due to the selfsame inflammation.   

The little girl though, is lovely, upright holding and curdled milk and all. In the picture she is holding the first cucumber of the season. Which was delicious. And a bright spot in the whole aspiring gardner saga. (Yes, a post of woe and lament on the garden blighted is forthcoming. Possibly with pictures.) What is even sadder than withering tomato plants is the fact that I took and even uploaded the picture above while the month on the calendar was still July, which means it was well over a week ago. And in that whole time I couldn't find the time to put together a post. Pathetic. What's worse is the state of my reader and a number of tabs my browser has open from, I believe, all the way back to our first week home-- I read some posts that week (primarily while breastfeeding, on a precariously balanced laptop) that I wanted to respond to thoughtfully. Like I said, the tabs are still open (long live restore all tabs feature). Hopefully, I can get that and the reader taken care of soon. Because I also have a whole lot to say. This time is very different from last time, much more different than I expected it to be, and it feels important to talk about it all.